1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates a home control bus, especially an intelligent home control bus for users.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, the home automation (HA) are developing and becoming the more popularity. Some famous HA standards of Europe and United States, such as LonWorks, CEBus and X-10, have been employed widely in the HA field, and some of them have become factual HA standards in the China. Meanwhile, many organizations and factories participate in this field actively, put forward constructive idea, and offer related products, so that the system integrate merchandisers and users have more choice making a flourish situation.
Recently, in a national important technical project of China, an intelligent home control bus referred as “Apbus” has been selected as an intelligent home control bus products.
Home automation technique had been becoming popular since 70's in United State in 70's, the X-10 is the most representative brand of home automation products in the time. Since then, Echelon and Electronic Industries Association (EIA) of United States launched their HA products to the market, namely, Lonworks and CEBus respectively, which later on merged to become the home networking standard protocol of HA defined by EIA. Although the communication media of these standards are not exactly the same, they all employ the concept of control network with a specific communication protocol. Using the well-defined protocol, resources such as data and commands could be shared among respective devices in the network system. Such a control network was widely accepted and employed due to its installation simplicity, operation flexibility and extension ease. So far, the sale of X-10 products has exceeded 100 million in number, 4 million families are now enjoying the convenience and comfort brought by HA system. Besides X-10, LonWorks is now also extensively engaged in Home automation, building automation (BA) as well as Industrial Automation (IA). Up to 1998, over 5 million nodes installed LonWorks are being used worldwide.
However, the application of X-10 Home Automation system is rarely used in some countries such as China. The reason is that X-10 Home Automation system is not suitability to these countries. Mostly, X-10 HA system is used in the rebuild of old houses in United States. The same problem would be considered when people decorate new house or old house. The shape of X-10 products, most of the time, may not match consistently with the traditional wall-mounted sockets on which the X-10 components have to be plugged. Furthermore, the performance of X-10 may, somehow, disappoint users. For example, its respond-time is relatively long (0.883 sec for sending a command in a 60 Hz power supply system) and its ability of anti interference signal is poor. These drawbacks hinder the market acceptance to the products in China.
These problems also exist in the United States. To deal with the technical incapability of X-10, EIA engaged in the development of new Home Networking Standard that was launched to market in 1992, namely, CEBus (Consumer Electronic Bus), forming a standard called IS-60/EIA-600. Hundreds of enterprise participates in this research and development, such as Microsoft, IBM, Compaq Computer Corp, AT&T, Bell Labs, Honeywell, Panasonic, Sony, Thomson Consumer Electronics, Leviton, Pacific Gas & Electric etc. CEBus is a relatively complete open-system, which defines almost all the transmission standard of signal in the transmission medium. CEBus requires control signals (data) to be transmitted at the same rate (10 KBPS) in all the media so that any electronic products meeting the CEBus standard could communicate directly and in a two-way manner. The addressing capability is outstanding comparable to Internet. The anti-interference ability and control function is much better than that of the X-10, which makes CEBus become the “Biggest Challenger” to the X-10. However, the interface of CEBus is relatively complicated and the cost is rather high. Thus, CEBus shares a smaller market, especially.
On the contrary, LonWorks is more widely known in some application fields in China, and attracts the attention of experts and research institutes. LonWorks also gains a high score in terms of application, especially in the data collection and the data process control. LonWorks is an open intelligent control network technology invested by Echelon in United States. The research and development works was finished in December 1990, involving almost 700 staffs. Mike Markkula, the founder of Echelon, is also one of the founders in Apple Computer. The basic component is the Neuron chip, which possesses communication and control function. Inside the Neuron chip, there are three 8-bit microprocessors. In July 1997, Echelon empowers LonWorks protocol to be implemented in other authorized CPUs, and accredit Adept System to develop relevant software employed in Motorola 32 bit microprocessor (Motorola 68340). In August of the same year, LonWorks is entitled by Integrated Home System Technical Committee of EIA the standard of Home Networking, with model number EIA/IS-709.
Although LonWorks gains the honors of a home networking standard granted by EIA, it mainly enjoys the popularity in BA market of China, but not in HA. The major reason is obviously its price, which cannot be easily afforded by most families in developing countries. LonWorks is well known of its open in nature, flexibility and interoperability, where a node with a LonMark trademark can be interoperated. To achieve these, systems have to be divided into different small parts, so as to increase the types of variety of controllers, to simplify and to fix the operation flow. Such a practice, however, increases the number of nodes and thereby raises the cost of the system. Indeed, the most fundamental operation for HA is the control of power supply to electrical appliances and the simplest approach is to use controllable socket. However, the LonMark Socket manufactured by Leviton in United States, in which a Neuron chip and Neuron transceiver are contained, is surprisingly expensive for most families.
As a consequence, some developers and manufacturers of LonWorks products in China has started to search the space of system integration, e.g. to extend the use of Neuron or to employ an ordinary processor as the controller and Neuron as the communication component, developing a so-called multi-function control box. Such approaches could certainly cut the cost and enrich the function, but the products would no longer be mutually interoperable. The system loses its flexibility of being a distributive system. Instead, it is just a centralized or semi-centralized control system.
The above home control bus have their different characteristics, but none of them can be accepted by common families in developing countries, and the seldom products in the market prevent them to choose, which influenced more or less the technical popularization and application of HA in developing countries.